For years, I have been a drinker.
I drank socially - out at the bar with friends in undergrad and grad school.
I came to class hungover. I left class to throw up. I missed class altogether because I couldn't drag myself out of bed.
But... that was just college. That's what we did for fun.
Then I started grad school, and moved in with my future husband. We started drinking at home together. He experimented with cocktails. We drank at the bar with friends; we drank at home together. (Sometimes I had a drink by myself.)
I missed class because of hangovers. I missed work because of hangovers.
I had sex with people I didn't mean to because I was drunk. I sought out creepy situations and desperate men for attention when I was drunk... and I got it.
My husband forgave me. He always saw each incident for what it was - a drunken mistake. Practically rape.
But then school ended. We moved to Kansas together and I started a job. A job I hated - teaching.
I dealt with the stress by drinking. I drank vodka from the moment I got home until the moment I passed out. I went to work hungover, but I rarely missed work due to hangovers anymore. My tolerance had gotten too high.
I drunkenly attended social gatherings. At these gatherings, I sought out creepy, self-loathing men who didn't mind making out with a drunk, married woman. My husband sometimes found me and got me home safely. Sometimes he did not.
I quit teaching because I hated it, but I did not quit drinking. It had become a part of my identity, who I was. No longer was I was the smartest girl in the room with the most ambition; I was the drunkest, the loudest, the sloppiest. I had no inhibition. I prided myself in my willingness to try everything once.
And the older I got, the more enmeshed in the cycle I became -- I was not living up to my potential; I was not finding success or happiness in my career, and my marriage was turning stale. To hide my failures from myself, I drank. All I could count on was the ecstasy of being drunk - the nothingness. The loss of feeling.
My husband became exacerbated, withdrawn. He began to smoke a lot of pot, stayed up late on the computer, was rarely intimate with me. I drank to feign normalcy.
When our sex life deteriorated, I again sought out intimacy with whoever would have me. I slept with the creepy server at the restaurant I frequented. I slept with the creepy guy in my massage therapy class. I slept with the friend back home who had a crush on me in middle school. These people didn't judge my drinking habits; they welcomed the opportunity to exert power over a powerless person.
I never hit rock bottom, though. Due to financial circumstances beyond my control, I was never going to be out on the street. I moved out of my house in a hallucination of independence. I sought a relationship with a married woman who was also spiraling out of control. I disregarded my husband's feelings (even as he was unable to share them with me), and I finally ended up alone.
No one wants to be with an alcoholic who has no control over her life. Not even me.
